The video, ‘Untold Stories of Black Women” mainly focused on the achievements and actions of Ida B.Wells. Susan B. Anthony is also featured. Ida Wells was one of the founders of the NAACP and an early leader in the civil rights movement. She focused on African-American rights, especially for women. Susan B. Anthony is a white abolitionist who fought to end slavery and the property ownership of women, but has become controversial in this day as she had said that women deserve the vote more than black men. Some white women began to draw comparisons between the enslavement of black people and the oppression that women face in a patriarchal society. Which I think is quite an inappropriate comparison.

The first event talked about in “One Hundred Years Towards Suffrage” is the Declaration of indepence. Abigail Adams requests that her husband John “remember the women”, and in response he almost intentionally and mockingly, does the opposite and is one of the men responsible for the Declaration of Independence stating “All men are created equal” Right from the START of our nation, women are being ignored and othered. It’s said that the use of  “man/men” is just a default, but it was insidiously used as a political/legal loophole to deny women of their rights. This exclusive language continued through 1868 with the Fourteenth amendment, which was the first to define ‘citizens’ and ‘voters’ as ‘male’. It isn’t until 1920 that the Nineteenth amendment was adopted nationwide, which granted everyone the right to vote, regardless of gender/sex. But this is just the beginning, as women of color were still not guaranteed the right to vote.

note: i know this is late, but i still wanted to share my thoughts on the article/video 🙂